Deploying a Simple Cloud App

I’d like to take this opportunity and introduce myself, as this blog post series is my debut on the Canadian IT Professionals blog. My name is Jonathan Rozenblit (@jrozenblit). I work alongside Rick and Damir though I focus on the developer tools and platforms. Windows Azure is one of those technologies that is both an infrastructure platform and a development platform, so when it comes to Windows Azure, I’m an developer evangelist as well as an IT Pro evangelist.

As I work with developers throughout the country, showing them what’s possible with Windows Azure, the conversation always comes up around environment setup, deployment, scaling, and decommissioning. Developers should know how things work; however, companies that have IT departments usually delegate Cloud services responsibilities to you, the IT Pro. As Rick mentioned here on the blog time and time again - "The Cloud is Coming" and it's best that you get in front of the ball and learn how this works in order for you to have more of a PROACTIVE conversation about cloud technologies instead of a nay-sayer reactive conversation. Position yourself as a thought leader who understands what the implications of cloud technologies are and demonstrate you already know how to leverage them.

Having said that, I’d like to take this opportunity to walk YOU though the steps required to deploy an application to the Cloud. Before we get started, you’ll need a Windows Azure account, which you can get by either activating a new Windows Azure Introductory Special or a Windows Azure Pass. You can find out more about these here.

In this walkthrough, we’ll deploy a simple ASP.NET MVC application that the developers have converted from an on-premise hosted application to a Cloud-ready application.

What We’ll Need

Here’s the deployment package prepared by the developers. You’ll need to download the package before you proceed.

Here’s what we’ll need from an infrastructure perspective:

1 SQL Azure database to store the application’s data 1 Storage Account to store some of the application’s settings and provider data. 1 Hosted Service as a Web Role to host the application itself

Since this deployment is for learning purposes only, we’ll also want to make sure that we take down the deployment so as to make sure that your credit card won’t be billed.

As you’re going through this walkthrough, if you run into any trouble or have any questions, feel free to send me an email. I’d be more than happy.

Comments and Feedback

At the end of the walkthrough, please take a moment to share what you thought of the walkthrough, what you’ve learned, and what next steps you’ll take on your journey to the Cloud in this LinkedIn group discussion. I’ll be reading through your responses and taking your feedback as input for next walkthrough and series of events that we’ll do together.